[freetds] Column Aliasing with MS SQL Server

James K. Lowden jklowden at freetds.org
Mon Jul 20 21:44:48 EDT 2009


Derek Parnell wrote:
> 
> Before we could use column aliases for singular column names, for
> instance, a query might be:
> 
> SELECT Descr AS Description FROM SomeTable;
> 
> Before, when calling odbc_fetch_array, we would get associative arrays
> with the key names being "Description".  However, now we get them called
> "Descr".
> 
> If I alter the query slightly to be 
> SELECT Descr + '' AS Description FROM SomeTable;
> 
> then the key names are actually "Description", as we want.

It really sounds like something local on your client, not in the FreeTDS
or ODBC configuration, because isql works.  

I would use TDSDUMP to look at the data coming back from the server.  I'm
sure you'll see the string "Description" as UCS-2 in the metadata packet. 
Make sure you're using TDS 7.0 or higher.  

The other thing to try is DBI_TRACE (Perl, right?).  If you set that to
level 3 or 4, I think you'll see the individual ODBC function calls.  If
you can discover the name of the function returning "Descr", that might
lead to something to look at more closely.  

HTH.  

--jkl



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